Search Results for: course design

The Benefits of Making Small Changes in Your Course Design: An Introduction to the Plus-One Approach
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The Benefits of Making Small Changes in Your Course Design: An Introduction to the Plus-One Approach

One Small Change… Iterative design isn’t a new concept. It’s been one of my favorite approaches to course development and teaching since my earliest days as an instructional designer. You probably do this in your teaching practice without even thinking – when you tweak something from one term to the next based on how an … Continue reading The Benefits of Making Small Changes in Your Course Design: An Introduction to the Plus-One Approach →

Pedagogy and Technology: Alignment for Pedagogy in Online Course Design

Alignment is a core guiding principle in the Quality Matters Higher Education Rubric for hybrid, blended, and online courses. Designing a course that exhibits individual components and activities that align with module-level course learning objectives and course-level learning objectives helps students make connections between the things they do in a course and what they should … Continue reading Pedagogy and Technology: Alignment for Pedagogy in Online Course Design →

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What Blue Apron Recipes Can Teach Us About Online Course Design

Blue Apron is a meal delivery service that provides all the pre-measured, raw ingredients and instructions customers need to quickly prepare home-cooked meals. When I signed up for the service last year, I was pleasantly surprised by the concise, well-designed recipes that come with each set of ingredients. The folks at Blue Apron must have … Continue reading What Blue Apron Recipes Can Teach Us About Online Course Design →

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Gaming the System: Understanding How Games Can Influence Course Designs, and Why You’d Want Them To

A recent Wired article by Chris Kohler titled “Hey, Video Games: Please Trick Me Into Thinking I’m Smart” caught my attention between levels of the mind-bending puzzle game Monument Valley as I rode the train in to work one morning. I began to wonder if video games (“real” video games and not the ones designed … Continue reading Gaming the System: Understanding How Games Can Influence Course Designs, and Why You’d Want Them To →

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Seven Deadly Sins of Online Course Design

I took my first online course in 2004 while pursuing my MFA. It seemed like a novel idea at the time, and I had no clue I’d be spending the next ten years up to my eyeballs in online courses. Since then, I’ve helped faculty design dozens of online and hybrid courses, taught several of … Continue reading Seven Deadly Sins of Online Course Design →

Going Undercover as a MOOC Student: What They Can Teach Us about Online-Course Design

In her post, A Rectangle is Not a Square, Melissa Koenig describes some of the differences between what most universities consider online courses and the newer model of MOOCs (massive open online courses). While I know it’s important to understand these differences when looking at the big picture of online education today, I’m also curious … Continue reading Going Undercover as a MOOC Student: What They Can Teach Us about Online-Course Design →

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Course Design: Behind the Curtain

Our department is tasked with providing online-course design services to faculty. This seems like a straightforward job description, but there is quite a lot that goes on behind the scenes, and some of it may not even be readily apparent upon first glance. Today, I’m going to pull back the curtain and let you in … Continue reading Course Design: Behind the Curtain →

3 Questions to Ask Yourself When Designing Your Course

When you work in education, winter break can be a time for reflection and revision. Faculty often use this time to rework their courses and syllabi. Traditionally when one revises a course they: Find texts and supporting materials Divide readings and homework throughout the quarter Determine a method for assessing students’ performance And, boom! Your course … Continue reading 3 Questions to Ask Yourself When Designing Your Course →

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Designing an Instructor-Agnostic Course with a Sense of Instructor Presence

If you think the title of this blog is too complicated to understand, you can use an analogy, such as eating candy without a sweet taste, or drinking water to booze up, or anything that sounds oxymoronic, self-contradictory, and illogical. If instructor-agnostic means removing the trace of any specific instructor, how could you create a … Continue reading Designing an Instructor-Agnostic Course with a Sense of Instructor Presence →

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Making Online Courses More Accessible by Design

Many years ago, before I moved to Chicago and began working at DePaul, my supervisor at a previous job took me on a field trip to a nonprofit service organization for the blind. At that time, I had never seen someone with a serious visual impairment use a computer. I had no idea how a … Continue reading Making Online Courses More Accessible by Design →